Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

The world of maths can seem mind-boggling, irrelevant and, let's face it, boring. This groundbreaking book reclaims maths from the geeks. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. In search of weird and wonderful mathematical phenomena, Alex Bellos travels across the globe and meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany and a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use

There are stacks upon stacks of self-help books that will promise you love, happiness, and a fabulous life. But how can you pinpoint the exact behaviors that cause you to be miserable in the first place? Sometimes when we're depressed, or just sad or unhappy, our instincts tell us to do the opposite of what we should - such as focusing on the negative, dwelling on what we can't change, isolating ourselves from friends and loved ones, eating junk food, or overindulging in alcohol. Sound familiar?

What We Cannot Know

Britain's most famous mathematician takes us to the edge of knowledge to show us what we cannot know. Science is king. Every week headlines announce new breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe, new technologies that will transform our environment, new medical advances that will extend our lives. Science is giving us unprecedented insight into some of the big questions that have challenged humanity ever since we've been able to formulate those questions.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, read by Arthur Morey. Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible? If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred and irrationality. Yet, as Steven Pinker shows, if you follow the trendlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer and more prosperous - not just in the West but worldwide.

Have you ever wondered why ice floats and water is such a freaky liquid? Or why chilis and mustard are both hot but in different ways? Or why microwaves don't cook from the inside out? In this fascinating scientific tour of household objects, The One Show presenter and all-round science bloke Marty Jopson has the answer to all of these and many more baffling questions about the chemistry and physics of the everyday stuff we use every day.

Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives

For over 20 years, psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman has examined the quirky science of everyday life. In Quirkology, he navigates the backwaters of human behavior, discovering the telltale signs that give away a liar, the secret science behind speed dating and personal ads, and what a person's sense of humour reveals about the innermost workings of their mind - all along paying tribute to others who have carried out similarly weird and wonderful work.

Hit Refresh

As told by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh is the story of corporate change and reinvention as well as the story of Nadella's personal journey, one that is taking place today inside a storied technology company, and one that is coming in all of our lives as intelligent machines become more ambient and more ubiquitous. It's about how people, organisations and societies can and must hit refresh - transform - in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, relevance and renewal.

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking

Many scientific and philosophical ideas are so powerful that they can be applied to our lives at home, work, and school to help us think smarter and more effectively about our behavior and the world around us. Surprisingly, many of these ideas remain unknown to most of us. In Mindware, the world-renowned psychologist Richard Nisbett presents these ideas in clear and accessible detail, offering a tool kit for better thinking and wiser decisions.

LD's says:"A collection of statistical studies more than "tools for smart thinking""

How to Build a Car

The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.

Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy

The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously changing system of immense complexity, it offers over 10 billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every 15 years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people. How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend? From the tally stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop.

Utopia for Realists

We live in a time of unprecedented upheaval, when technology and so-called progress have made us richer but more uncertain than ever before. We have questions about the future, society, work, happiness, family and money, and yet no political party of the right or left is providing us with answers. So, too, does the time seem to be coming to an end when we looked to economists to help us define the qualities necessary to create a successful society. We need a new movement.

Simon Caldwell says:"interesting but more radical then the title sugges"

The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics

The Art of the Infinite takes infinity, in its countless guises, as a touchstone for understanding mathematical thinking. Robert and Ellen Kaplan guide us through the “Republic of Numbers,” where we meet both its upstanding citizens and its more shadowy dwellers; and transport us across the plane of geometry into the unlikely realm where parallel lines meet.

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves

Fascinating and provocative, Dan Ariely’s The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty is an insightful and brilliantly researched take on cheating, deception, and willpower. The internationally best-selling author pulls no punches when it comes to home truths. His previous titles Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality have become classics in their field, revealing astonishing traits that run through modern humankind. Now acclaimed behavioural economist Dan Ariely delves deeper into psychology.

We hear that we must be passionate about only one thing, that 10,000 hours of hard practice is needed to achieve mastery. But in fact most successful people, including Nobel Prize winners, nurture multiple areas of knowledge and activity that feed their central subject. Whether it's making a perfect soufflé, dancing a tango or lighting a fire, when we take the time to cultivate small and quantifiable areas of expertise, we change everything.

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road Drugs Empire

From
New York Times best-selling author Nick Bilton comes a true-life thriller about the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder of the online black market Silk Road. In 2011, Ulbricht, a 26-year-old libertarian idealist and former Boy Scout, launched 'a website where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them'. He called it Silk Road, opened for business on the Dark Web, and christened himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from 20 countries, ranging as far back as the 18th century, to uncover key economic and social patterns.

PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter,
PostCapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change and how we can build a more equal society. Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself has reached its limits.

Publisher's Summary

In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. .

The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. .

Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do. .

In The Mathematics of Love, Dr. Hannah Fry takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the patterns that define our love lives, applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What’s the chance of finding love? What’s the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down?

From evaluating the best strategies for online dating to defining the nebulous concept of beauty, Dr. Fry proves—with great insight, wit, and fun—that math is a surprisingly useful tool to negotiate the complicated, often baffling, sometimes infuriating, always interesting, mysteries of love.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

I really like the premise of this book. Loved the tongue in cheek presentation style of the author. From the introduction and title I had hoped for more insights based on real statistical analysis. Much of the book is founded on hidden opinions and assumptions or when they are specified (I.e. London has more attractive single women than men?) they are suspect to say the least. The Internet dating graph to me clearly shows a strong correlation between attractiveness and number of messages. This is played down and the idea that some people are messaging people on the basis that they feel more likely to get a reply is pure speculation. What would make this book useful would be proper scientific research by psychologist and statisticians so we could have both patterns and reasons. This is far to much of find a pattern or theory and then make up a story around it that may fit. With a proper scientific approach this could become a great area of research. Recommended, but more for fun rather than useful revelations.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Mathematics of Love to be better than the print version?

Never had the printed version

What about Hannah Fry’s performance did you like?

As she is the writer, her enthusiasm regarding this wonderful subject shines through her voice. I found it wonderful.

What did you learn from The Mathematics of Love that you would use in your daily life?

Since I am long past the optimal stopping rule for my search of love, that part is not applicable to me (although very interesting). The low negativity threshold seems like practical advice that I will remember. But aside of that, even the seemingly non-practical parts were all intriguing.

Any additional comments?

Seriously recommend the book to anyone with an inclination to mathematical modeling (no previous background is needed though), and anyone interested in the scientific aspects of love.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Paul

13/11/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"An Interesting Take on Mathematics"

The way that the book connects mathematics to concepts of romance both practically and impractically helps keep the listener interested in what is usually a dull subject. Hannah Fry's enthusiasm for math enhances the book. She reads the book with the perfect intonation, certainly because she is both author and narrator of the book.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Cesar

Rio de Janeiro

07/03/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"Not necessarily good in audio form"

I read other reviews that said that this particular book is not great in audio because there are some tables, graphs and mathematical formulas that although included in the accompanying PDF, take away from the enjoyment of listening to a purely audio book. I tend to agree with them now. The book is a nice introduction to some mathematical concepts and insights, but if you really want it buy the ebook or printed version.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

D'AGOSTINI SANDRO LUCIANO

29/06/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Better in audio format"

I had bought this book some time ago but couldn't get to the end: I expected more complexity and mathematical rigor than the book could provide. However, the audiobook is quite a different story: the narration does a good job in keeping the tone light and the book entertaining. All things considered, I would recommend the audiobook to a friend.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Blythe

Alberta (formerly California)

27/02/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Expanded version of Fry's TED talk"

Any additional comments?

This is an expanded TED book based on Fry's original TED talk. Fry looks at the mathematics behind everything from meeting people in bars to the algorithms dating sites use to what age to settle down to wedding planning, predicting divorce, and why maintaining a long-term relationship is actually the same mathematically as the Prisoner's Dilemma (and why the same game strategies work). Short but interesting.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Kalena Kuester

21/02/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Very Good"

Ms. Fry has a beautiful voice in my opinion and she reads her book very well. The book is very good. One problem with specifically the audible version are the mathematical equations and the like. I can imagine they'd be easy enough to understand when written out but it takes a good deal of concentration to decipher them audibly. Overall a great listen though I wish there was more.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Cliente Amazon

06/10/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"I loved it"

The book is brilliant, Hannah Fry is great as well in her voice acting. It's stunning how maths can have a say in such, you would think, unpredictable human behaviors. It seems at the end we all are kind of dull and predictable in our decisions.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Marco Berry

21/12/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Wonderful Insight."

This is an excellent start to in understanding patterns in love. I highly recommend it.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Caleb Daniel Ramsier

14/11/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Makes Math Relatable"

Just another reason why I love Math! Used it to make some decisions on love.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

André Bérubé

20/06/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"PDF"

Can't find the PDF mentioned in the reading. Hannah Fry has a nice voice but the subject would be better understood in a written book.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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